The U.S. is one of the few countries in the world to have just two major political parties. This is known as a two-party system. Almost all other countries have a number of political parties which represent people with different ideologies.
Ideology is a continuum, that is, it goes from extreme right wing, far right, moderate conservative, moderate liberal, far left, and finally extreme left wing. In the middle there is a point where people have almost no ideological beliefs. But in the U.S. we have artificially divided the ideological spectrum in half with anyone on the right being categorized as politically conservative and anyone on the left being politically liberal.
The problem with this is it lumps a lot of different people together. For example, this forces moderate conservatives to be lumped in with right wing extremist fascists who, under this definition, are all conservatives. The same holds true on the other side of the spectrum where moderate liberals are lumped in with left wing extremist communists.
Worst of all, the fact that our country is ideologically divided in half is tearing us apart. It also results in gridlock in Congress which is not allowing anything to get done there and causing our many problems to fester out of control.
The solution to all of the problems that we are presently having in the United States is very simple – we need a third major centrist political party to represent ideological moderate conservatives and moderate liberals that have more in common with each other than with extremists.
The problem is that our country has had a two-party political system run by the Republicans and Democrats since the 1850’s. This has resulted in a paradigm by many in this country that this is the way it should be because this is the way it has always been. This thinking needs to change and change quickly.
The approximately 40% of Americans who are moderates, centrists, or Independents, whatever you want to call us, have little to no representation in government. Moderates make decisions based on facts and science-based logic, we love democracy because democracy is a moderate form of government and our Founding Fathers were moderates, we hate authoritarianism, we are not religious hypocrites, and we believe in the rule of law and the constitution. We ran our country for over two hundred years but we have slowly lost control to those with more extreme ideological beliefs.
Moderates do not have a major political party and presidential candidate to rally around in 2020. Since we don’t, we will need to decide on which of the available presidential candidates to vote for in November. For moderates and Independents there is only one candidate who meets most of the values that we as moderates, centrists, and Independents have. We need to vote to make sure that Joe Biden is elected president.
But once Biden is elected, we need to push for the formation of a third major centrist party to make sure that our democracy is never again threatened and to end the gridlock that is holding us back. The moderate middle 40% of Americans need our own political party. Join with others who understand that the problems that we are facing are due to our failing two-party political system. There are several fledgling efforts out there to accomplish this such as the Alliance Party (theallianceparty.com), the Reform Party (reformparty.org), and Represent.Us. Volunteer and support these organizations – nothing will happen without you. Moderates are not as passionate as those with more extreme ideological beliefs but this needs to change for the sake of all Americans.